Review: Saturn And The Sun – The New Age Is Shit

STELLAGE.

Some repetitive beats are an incitement to move, whereas others terminate movement entirely. The New Age Is Shit tends to the latter. The album starts in a dead end and only pushes itself further into the wall. Distortion deadens the energy, coating the drum machine in concrete, dragging at the base of no-input feedback and synthesisers, impeding any attempts to rouse the record’s glum pulsation toward something higher. As a title, The New Age Is Shit can be taken in many ways: is it a pessimistic reflection on any efforts to spiritually transcend the current state of things? Do our attempts to elevate ultimately just push us further down into the murk? Given the sonics here, perhaps it’s better to revert to a blunter, more flippant interpretation: quite literally that we exist in shitness, shuffling between sources of disappointment, gradually becoming numb to all stimulus. And so the rhythm on the title track patters with all the gusto of oil leaking from the ceiling, while synthesiser judders joylessly to its own apathetic tempo. The greyscaled techno of “Determination” trudges through 11 minutes of fizzing, squealing and mumbling and ultimately gets nowhere. Where would it go anyway?